Making beautiful holiday ornaments with dough can be fun and easy if you follow these steps. It's also a fun craft idea for children! This article teaches you how to make Christmas ornaments out of dough using either a microwave or an oven.

Ad

Ingredients

Oil (enough for your hands)

4 cups of flour

1 1/2 cups of water

1 cup of salt

Food coloring

Yields one dozen cookies

Steps

Part 1 of 4: Mixing the Dough

1

Rub your hands with cooking oil. This will give the dough more resiliency as you work with it.

Ad

2

Mix together all-purpose flour, water and salt. Use your hands for best results. Knead dough for approximately 10 minutes.

3

Roll out the dough out on a well-floured surface. Roll out dough until it is approximately 1⁄4 inch (0.6 cm) thick. Dough rolled too thickly will take longer to dry and could be doughy even after cooking; dough rolled too thin causes the dried ornaments to break more easily.

4

Cut out shapes with cookie cutters. Reindeer, elves, stars, snowflakes, Christmas trees, birds, or angels are all great ideas of ornament shapes.

Alternately, let the kids design their own shapes. These ornaments won't have the clean, articulated lines of a cookie cutter, but they'll be one-of-a-kind, and entirely their own!

5

Thread an oversize needle through the top of each ornament to create a hole for hanging. The hole should be at least 1⁄8 inch (0.3 cm) from the top of the ornament.

Part 2 of 4: Cooking in the Oven

Once the oven is ready and the dough is cut, cook for 30 minutes. Allow ornaments to cool.

3

Lay out plastic or wax paper on a table or another flat surface. This will prevent staining as you paint the ornaments.

4

Paint ornaments with poster or tube paints. Decorate until ornaments are satisfactory. Once dry, spray with clear polyurethane on both sides to preserve.

These ornaments are not suitable or safe to eat. Do not attempt to eat them.

5

Once dried, string a thread through the hole on the top of the ornaments. Alternately, use ribbon or thread to hang.

Ad

Part 3 of 4: Cooking in the Microwave

1

Lay out plastic or wax paper on a table or another flat surface. This will prevent staining as you paint the ornaments.

2

Mix together 1/4 bottle of food color with one cup of water for paint. Alternately, use poster or tube paints. Greens, reds, silvers, golds, and deep blues are considered traditional Christmas colors.

3

Paint with a basting brush or paint brush. For a gauzier texture, use cotton swabs. Decorate until ornaments are satisfactory.

4

Place your ornaments, four at a time, in the microwave. Cook for about two minutes at high.

5

Check the consistency of the dough. It should feel like a moderately dampened sponge. If it is already dried out, take ornaments out of the microwave and allow to cool.

6

Microwave ornaments for an additional minute. Take ornaments from microwave and allow to cool.

7

Spray ornaments with extra hold hairspray or lightly coat with Flecto Varathane (acrylic finish) or decoupage. This will give the ornaments a nice, glossy look.

Note: Do not microwave the ornaments after applying hairspray and /or acrylic finish. These products are flammable and will ignite in your microwave, causing a fire hazard.

8

Allow ornaments to dry overnight.

Ad

Part 4 of 4: Decorating Ideas

1

Put silver cookie beads in ornaments while still damp. This will give the ornaments a bit of sparkle by reflecting light.

Cookie sprinkles can be lightly applied and lightly pressed into the dough.

2

Yarn can be used to make hair or smiles on ornaments. Lightly wet the yarn before pressing it into ornaments: This will help you control its design as well as keep it from browning in either the oven or the microwave.

3

Use small amounts of dough as add-ons. Set small amounts of dough in different colors to be rolled into eyes, mouths, shoes, buttons, etc. Paint a different color for added contrast.

4

Score the dough with a needle to create texture contrasts. Use checkered patterns, or score circles or simply squiggly lines.

5

Finished.

Ad

We could really use your help!

Can you tell us about

Shoes?

Yes

No

Can you tell us about

haircare?

Yes

No

Can you tell us about

Personal Development?

Yes

No

Can you tell us about

Commitment Issues?

Yes

No

Thanks for helping! Please tell us everything you know about

...

Tell us everything you know here. Remember, more detail is better.

Tips

Provide details.

Please be as detailed as possible in your explanation. We will take your detailed information, edit it for clarity and accuracy, and incorporate it into an article that will help thousands of people.Don't say: Eat more fats.Do say: Add fats with some nutritional value to the foods you already eat. Try olive oil, butter, avocado, and mayonnaise.

Children especially love working with the dough, cutting with the cookie cutters and helping with the painting, while toddlers adore rolling the dough as this gives them a chance to join in the fun.

Please note that the hairspray, flecto varathane and/or decoupage may not make your ornaments last longer, but they do add to the aesthetic quality of your ornaments. Also, do not microwave the dough after it is sprayed with hairspray, flecto varathane and/or decoupage. These chemicals are flammable.

Whatever you or your children can come up with, be creative.

Warnings

Do not eat this mixture!!!

Do not place dough on newspaper; it will get ink on the dough.

Adult supervision is recommended when placing the ornaments in the microwave.

Do not place anything metal in the microwave.

In case of ingestion, if you have used any kind of color that's not food color, call a doctor immediately. If there aren't toxic substance in them, make sure the child is given a good amount of fluids through the day due to the high salt content of the dough.

These doughs are not edible due to the high salt concentration (although if just a small amount is ingested, it won't hurt you. The taste alone will be enough to deter large quantities being eaten) especially if hairspray or other toxic substance is used on them.

Share

Featured Articles

Meet a Community Member

Meet Gaurang, a wikiHowian from India who has been editing on wikiHow for over 3 years and is a Featured Author, New Article Booster, and Admin. He has patrolled over 14,500 changes and has made over 10,400 edits to improve articles around the site. He enjoys patrolling recent changes, boosting new articles, and voting in the NFD Guardian. His favorite article he’s worked on here is How to Use Google Drive, since collaboration between him and other community members turned it into a really informative and easy-to-understand guide. His proudest accomplishment on wikiHow has been starting the Hindi wikiHow, which provides access to how-tos in a language spoken by more than 500 million people worldwide. He says writing on wikiHow is a rewarding process, since you get to help millions of people everyday and learn things along the way. He loves how the wikiHow community is a caring, supportive, and dedicated bunch of people. To new editors, he says, “Don't be afraid to make mistakes and ask for help. There are many who are willing to help you out here!”